Week 15 // RFVA Tip: 10 Best Business Checklists

Great links are the bridges from your problem to your solution.

Click to your heart’s content to access these fantastic resources for your business needs:

See what you need for a winning business plan:

Business Plan

What if you need to close your business? Don’t forget these key steps:

Closing a Business

 How many times have you wished you had made a different decision about who you would hire, who you would take on as a partner, and the list goes on? Get some help here:

Longterm Decisions

 Even the richest person doesn’t turn away money. See how you are doing it and put a stop to it by following this timely advice:

Managing Finances

 Do you really have all the tools you need on hand to be the most productive? Find out:

Office Essentials

Not just anybody with a good sales track record can sell for you. Find out how to make sure that next rep is the best fit:

Sales Rep Evaluation

Everybody’s doing it, right? Yet, not just any form of social media will do to get you top results:

Social Media

You have a great idea, or so it seems. See how your genius start up idea stacks up against this list:

Start Up To Do

Off to the races? Not so fast. Could it be that you are forgetting something:

Starting a Business

Our work systems are what make or break us. It’s time for an overhaul of yours:

Systems  

What great checklists have you come across?

Much success to you,

Robyn

Week 14 // RFVA Tip: 5 Quick Fixes for a Better Work Week

Some of your best untapped tools have the dual role of helping you help yourself.

These five tips have made a huge difference for me and are really quite easy to do.

1. Plan out your entire week Sunday night. Use your calendar as your greatest ally and add tasks, things to remember, shopping lists, everything.

2. Color code your closet.  Sound too OCD? You will be amazed at how quickly you can knock this out.  Your efforts will reward you continually, as you will come up with all kinds of new combinations for your wardrobe. Everyone will think you’ve been shopping.

3. Clean out and organize your trunk. Got too much junk in your trunk? You are not alone. With a little TLC, your trunk can be an extension of your office as it offers plenty of space that can be organized to help you be more productive on the go.  Get a small plastic tub with a latching top and keep your most important go-to files and other supplies, such as an extra power cord, there.

4. Pick a day each week to purge files. If you could save money like you save papers, you would be super rich. For most of us, this is true but just taking a little time each week to get rid of or make a digital record of paperwork get us well on the way to staying organized.

5. Prepare a few lunches ahead on Sunday. Chop up a couple of salads and put together a few of your favorite sandwiches. Set them up in the front of your fridge to make them easy to grab and go. Put a few sets of utensils, napkins, and packets of condiments in your lunch bag to pull from throughout the week.

Even if you can only work in just a couple of these work week habits, you will see a nice payoff for your efforts. Are there any other things you’ve been doing that make a huge difference for you? Please post your comments.

Much success to you,

Robyn

Week 11 // RFVA Tip: Organize Your Desk Fast In 7 Steps

Prioritize your valuable desktop real estate.

Few things slow you down at work faster than a desk cluttered up with so much stuff that you can’t really find anything. Sure, you want the things you use most and are working on right now at your fingertips. But, it’s important that only the most vital things have valuable real estate on your desk. Think of your desk items as a set of your most well chosen words. You want them to be right on your lips just when you need them. Likewise, when your desk is clear and organized, you can get straight to what you need quickly, maximizing your workflow and keeping your office life low stress. Here are seven quick and easy steps to organize your desk now:

1. Prioritize files. Create a a set of Incoming and Outgoing hanging files and put three folders in each labeled “Critical”, “Medium”, and “Low”.

Keep these in a small standing hanging file holder on your desk and only keep files in them that need attention for the week. Everything else goes in a folder off your desk. Keep items that you no longer need hard copies of in the “low” folder and designate a day of the week to scan these and recycle the originals.

2. Prioritize office supplies. Designate a desk drawer for your most used office supplies: a couple of pens, staple machine, staple puller, letter opener, and a headset for your cell phone.

If you don’t have a free drawer or drawers at all, get a decorative box and put it beside your printer or on another surface near your desk.

3. Organize and keep project files handy. Bundle all the paperwork for each project or file you are working on and clip it together with a clip binder. Place them in a stack, turning every other clipped set to the side so that you can easily see each alternating set.

4. Increase your short-term, nearby storage. Invest in a rolling hanging file cart and keep these project file sets in them in hanging file folders.

5. Streamline writing essentials. Keep a notepad and pen that you jot down everything with until you can enter it into your calendar, document, email or whatever you need it for. Once you have made use of the information, throw that sheet away.

Having just one place you keep these kind of notes will keep post-it and paper clutter down.

6. Keep decorations to a minimum. Can it go on the wall? Hang it up. Does it have sentimental value? Put in a shadow box, on a wall shelf, or pin it on a framed cork board.

7.  Digitize as much as possible. Download a desktop widget as your desk clock. Create a computer desktop shortcut to notepad or another quick note taking application to take brief notes as needed.

Make it as easy as possible to put things on your computer and retrieve them with shortcuts, rather than writing or printing them.

Once you have made some headway, reassess your desk-clearing system and tweek it as needed. Your goal should be to make keeping your desk clear one of the easiest things you do each day. Check out your local thrift store to see if you can scoop up some of the organization aides mentioned. Otherwise, Wal-Mart, Target, Ikea, and Container Store all have a tons of low-cost options for all the items suggested in this post. If you like online shopping, here are some links to get you started:

Hanging Files

Rolling Hanging File Cart

Desktop Hanging File Holder

Decorative Office Boxes